A pair of investment strategists say banks are now taking a closer look at whether Bitcoin can help them stay relevant.
In a new interview on the Unchained podcast, CoinShares chief strategy officer Meltem Demirors says she’s now fielding crypto questions from banking executives on a regular basis.
She points to the low-yield environment in Treasury bonds and other government debt as a key catalyst fueling renewed interest in BTC.
“We’ve been talking to banks and asset managers who are asking, ‘What do we do? Is Bitcoin maybe part of the answer to how we stay relevant, how we keep AUM (assets under management) and actually deliver a product that our clients will pay for?’ Like, it’s not rocket science, right? It’s simple math. It’s addition and multiplication. Like, any number times zero is zero.”
Lyn Alden, the founder of Lyn Alden Investment Strategy, says she’s having similar conversations.
“For example, the other day, I gave a presentation to a bank board of directors, and Bitcoin wasn’t one of my kind of presentation points. I was just talking about fiscal monetary policy, and then one of the first things they asked when I was done was what do I think about Bitcoin, because they had noticed, for example, the Michael Saylor [investment]. You know, at this point, it’s worth half a billion dollars in Bitcoin that he put on his balance sheet, and they had heard in one of the interviews that when he was convincing his board of directors, he sent a bunch of different materials to them, and one of the things he sent was my article on Bitcoin.
So the board’s like, ‘So how real is this? So is this, like, still an asset class for the crazies or is it, you know, an actual…that’s how they phrased it. Or is it an actual…like, do you treat it like a commodity? Do you treat it like a currency?’ So, I gave then kind of my five-minute bullish overview for Bitcoin.”
Demirors and Alden aren’t the only insiders noting a surge of interest in crypto from banks.
Acting Comptroller of the Currency Brian Brooks recently said US banking institutions are exploring how they can support crypto assets amid an increasingly friendly regulatory environment.
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